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Okay, they’re not cutting any of these, but how is Washington supposed to drop $965 billion from their budget? Well technically, they aren’t cutting that either but maybe reducing the planned growth in spending over the next decade. And admittedly, the government will spend $2.14 trillion more in 2022 than it does today. But sequestration is still the end of the world and stuff.

Don’t believe me? Just this week the White House leaked that their assistant chef Sam Kass might have to take A Few Days Off. I told you it was serious.

During a White House meeting with agriculture journalists, Kass discussed the subject, mentioning that his next stop was a “furlough meeting.”

“We’re being furloughed. Shin and I are getting cut,” Kass said, seeming to joke. He was naming Shin Inouye, the West Wing communications staffer charged with taking care of “specialty media,” who was monitoring the reporters’ meeting. But when asked to specifically confirm that he is indeed being furloughed, Kass backpedaled. “I don’t know,” Kass said.

“We have a budget meeting…in the briefing room is all I can say,” Inouye said by way of explanation, as he and Kass headed off to their date with destiny.

Mercifully, this cruel possible furlough wouldn’t affect Kass’ three fellow sous-chefs, the executive chef or the executive pastry chef. But what if President Obama craves Duck Galantine during a bout of Republican-induced insomnia? We pray that his drastically reduced staff of 5.95 chefs will be able to answer that 3 a.m. phone call.

Shockingly, the nightmare of sequestration gets even worse. Did you know that small possible future reductions in the rate of government growth would create an espionage nightmare plunging our national security into mortal peril? Because it might, you know. I read all about it in BuzzFeed:

Lawmakers and officials who oversee security clearances say the abrupt cut to roughly 20 percent of federal workers' pay is pushing tens of thousands into the category of financially strapped government workers for whom foreign agents look in recruiting moles and spies.

It may sound far-fetched, but those with experience in espionage cases said the threat is genuine.

The risk that financial hardship could lead to espionage is "definitely a concern," South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a former Judge Advocate General in the Air Force, told BuzzFeed.

Sadly, BuzzFeed didn’t illustrate this crisis with baby aardvark GIFs, but that in no way lessens the story’s seriousness. As sequestration moves forward, be prepared to hear more tragic tales of an emaciated federal government struggling to put Duck Galantine on the White House china.

Of course, we could eliminate these possible security risks by simply firing a few government employees instead of furloughing them. What am I saying? That’s total wacko-bird conservative common sense, which has no place in polite company. Just a thought; if the government has too many employees for even the government to keep track of, those miserly conservatives might have a point that we should reduce the payroll a bit.

Lol I have just finished listening to an archived interview (from earlier this month) the Book report radio show held with Chef John Moeller who served 3 first families in his tenure at the White House, and apart from thinking - jeesh all those 5 star meals must cost a lot, not to mention 6 highly qualified chefs...although in the interview Moeller does say that if there are only 2 people listed for a meal, only one chef is to prepare the meal(s). I wonder if Michelle Obama can cook....

Minnesota experienced a win for liberty recently when the state reformed regulations on in-home food businesses. According to the Institute for Justice, almost every state has regulations, called cottage food laws, that limit the sale of food out of the home. However, until last month Minnesota was one of the strictest states, allowing many bakers to sell their products only at farmers’ markets and events, and capping the amount they could earn annually to $5,000.

There is significant transpartisan movement in the United States Senate to bring long overdue reforms to the justice system. A number of bills have already been introduced, including measures that would reform civil asset forfeiture statutes (FAIR Act), address mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent low-level offenders (Smarter Sentencing Act), and expungement or sealing the records of nonviolent offenders (REDEEM Act).

The White House is offering more details about President Barack Obama's FY 2016 budget proposal in advance of its formal release on Monday. Politico is reporting that the administration will call for an end to the sequester -- across-the-board cuts to the rate of spending increases enacted in 2011.

The Congressional Budget Office has released its annual budget outlook for the next decade, showing that the budget deficit will continue to fall in the current fiscal year, as well as next year, before gradually beginning to rise steadily again, thereafter. The media mostly talking about this aspect of the report. The Associated Press, for example, ran with the headline: "CBO: Budget deficit to shrink to lowest level since Obama took office."

One of the ways the Obama administration managed to get ObamaCare through Congress was by keeping the cost of the law under $1 trillion. This was accomplished through various budget gimmicks and backloading costs in years at the end of the original budget estimates. These deceptive tactics are how the administration managed to get a score from the Congressional Budget Office purporting that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit by $124 billion.

In addition to proposing an onslaught of spending increases and tax hikes in his sixth State of the Union address, President Barack Obama will, according to The New York Times, "effectively declare victory over the economic hard times that dominated his first six years in office and advocate using the nation’s healthier finances to tackle long-deferred issues like education and income inequality."

Just two days after facing an historic uprising within the ranks of his own House Republican Conference, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) defended his four-year record as the lower chamber's presiding officer, telling reporters that he is "the most anti-establishment Speaker" in history.

The White House is trying to downplay yet another ObamaCare scandal by calling Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the law, a liar. In a statement provided to a leftist blog, a White House spokesperson disputed the MIT economist's October 2013 comment that the designed lack of transparency in ObamaCare was "a huge political advantage" to ram it through Congress.

A progressive organization is out with a new issue ad blaming congressional Republicans for the Ebola outbreak. In the disgusting minute-long ad, titled "Republican Cuts Kill," the Agenda Project Action Fund uses clips of Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KY), urging more spending cuts to the federal budget. It also features footage of Obama administration officials discussing budget cuts and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) purported inability to deal with viral outbreaks.